Transformers: The Voyages
by Fairytale Warrior
Summary: "This story begins several long vorns after the Autobots left Earth. Sari has died of old age and all of them have gone their own separate ways, keeping contact over long distances. Prowl was honored and never forgotten, least of all by the Autobots as moved on with their life-cycles. With this, they relaxed into their new lives- well, most of them did..." T for language/gore.


**Message from the Author- **This story begins several long vorns after the Autobots left Earth. Sari has died of old age, being half organic, and all of them have gone their own separate ways, keeping contact over long distances when they could. Prowl was honored and never forgotten, least of all by the Autobots as moved on with their life-cycles. With this, they relaxed into their new lives on Cybertron- well, most of them did…

I'd like it to be known this is sort of an alternate idea to Chronsse's fanfic, Phenomenon. Her brilliant fanfic inspired me to write this one out, you should definitely check it out :D

. www . fanfiction s / 6731278/ 1 /Phenomenon

Transformers: The Voyages

**::Blah:: - Com. link**

**Blah – thoughts**

****Blah – talking through text or IM **

**Breem - 8.3 Earth minutes**

**Joor - About 6.5 Earth hours**

**Orn - About 13 Earth days**

**Vorn – 83 Earth Years**

**Chorsan Cycles – think of them as extra big 'light years'**

**[][][][][][][] – Alien characteristics with no English translation**

**Disclaimer: All rights to Transformers and its characters belong to Hasbro. **

**Title: The Hornet**

The planet of Duerxa lay busy in the popular galaxy of Xen, teeming with life and energy as races of all sorts passed each other on the market streets. It was a planet well-known for its wide variety of culture and sumptuous population, a place where both criminals and noble creatures could gather. Color sprang out of mats, electric data pads and 3D billboards, bringing each store front to life and fighting for dominance as the items and decorations sought to lure in customers. Pouring out of day lamps and filtering through the thick crowds in the underground metro streets, hover-lamps cast embellished illuminations across the faces that migrated past them.

Like drains lining the edge of the sidewalk, large holes were cut out of the thick crust and gave off a slight blue tint as they hummed almost silently in the bustle of the city. They were universally called sonic apulsavators for their ability to lift and lower passengers through complicated pulses. Every now and then a creature would leap out of one of the holes, the size and shape of it growing or shrinking to accommodate them as they did. Other times, an alien would walk, crawl, slither, hover, fly up to a floating key-pad beside the holes and either punch in a code or swipe a card across it- depending on the kind of alien. The small hole would open its mouth and, when the alien positioned itself on top of a metal pad, would proceed to swallow the creature into Duerxa's second stomach.

There are two stomachs and one core, surrounded by the planet's dry, dusty skin. The richest of the rich lived in the core as nobles, business owners, or first-class citizens; sterile, clean, and orderly at the very center of the planet. Tourists and second-class citizens could afford to live in the first stomach, which framed and wrapped around the core with light from organic crystals that changed from day to night. The second stomach was mostly for the underground market, shady but full of fabulous wares and remarkable goods that varied from the legal spectrum to the not so legal spectrum. You could find well cared for educational facilities to illegal street races and cannon fodders in this stomach. Here, the security measures were second best, capable of driving off any illegal immigrants before they could ever reach and endanger the second stomach or the more respectable members of society. The living quarters could also range from dirty little shacks to nice urban homes, but you didn't have to be terribly rich to get into the second stomach. Just enough to pay for a passport- though, it was also best to bring extra cash, just in case you got caught up in something and had to pay your own bail.

Or got pickpocketed.

The skin was the outer part of the planet and seemed reserved simply as a market place. Some of the poorer shop owners could make homes out of their stores but had to keep their belongings out of the way of their customers. It was dusty, crowded, and dangerous on the surface but also the liveliest. That was why the security measures on the top were the best. Everyone could come and go as they pleased as long as they paid the docking due for their parked ships and space-vessels. Each docking bay was held under sharp security to keep vessels from being stolen and to be sure the dockers paid what they owed. If you weren't a certified citizen with a special pass and Blinker- an ID device inserted into your body, usually inside the neck- then you had to pay up.

The surface provided jobs of an unclassifiable range; cooks, doctors, mechanics, even bounty hunters could find work. Although, it was difficult to find a planet that _didn't _have some sort of work for bounty hunters. Most had a few bulletin-boards up with flyers asking for help with something- "something" that didn't always mean killing someone or wrangling up a criminal. On Duerxa there was an enormous data board that held holographic, downloadable files. Aliens could walk up to it and find a job, the complex systems able to search for millions of different jobs from different servers all at the same time at an incredible pace. Which is to be expected of a machine engineered by Cybertronians. Once you found a suitable job you could download the file onto your ship but you had to be careful as some of the files were fake and held viruses.

There was a sumptuous crowd gathered around the large data board when a strikingly yellow, Cybertronian mini-bot came up out of a nearby sonic apulsavator. His optics surveyed the board for a moment before he shook his head, as though resisting the urge to look for a job, and continuing on through the crowd. It was a busy day today, busier than usual, even. To keep the box under his arm from being stolen or being tampered with by any clever pickpockets the Cybertronian had to keep it at his center and duck, weave, and twist around various hands, tentacles, digits, etc. as he migrated through the hot streets. Primus, it was scorching out here so badly toady that his internal coolants were threatening to turn into the next gear!

"Sorry," the bot apologized quickly when he almost ran into a large scaly creature. He veered to the left and twisted on his heel to jump over a smaller, dwarf-like thing running beneath him. As he did, a message began to pulsate in his Coms, indicating an oncoming call. Accepting the message without checking the ID he wove between two orange skinned slugs and said, "hello?"

"Bumblebee!" a voice roared angrily into his audio, "where the in the _lomma _are you, dacker?!"

"Actually," Bumblebee began, parroting a tone of innocent yet casual confusion, "I'm not really sure where I am. Maybe if you´d stop using weird curses native to your species alone I might be able to stop asking myself ´what the _frag_ is a _lomma_?' and start focusing more on pinpointing my own location." Before the angry gunslinger could bellow into his receptors again he continued. "I'd guess somewhere between Arōne and Jupiner?" he lied, pretending to be on the opposite side of the planet.

"I'll frag you up, you little-"

"Well, I hope you have fun with that," the scout interrupted quickly, ducking beneath the gangly limps of a Stick-walker and cutting off the line. His angry caller was from a race that took great pride in, well, just about_ anything_ they could do with some skill. It didn't matter if they hardly had any particular precision in what they did as long as they did it better than _someone else_. It was simply a part of their nature to try to pretend to be dominant at everything they did. Unfortunately, that meant that anyone who proved themselves better than them were to be treated with the greatest forms of derision and animosity.

The big story for this particular Gragrita's rage is summed up simply by; Bumblebee beat him in a race. And while Bee didn't really particularly care about the organic's rage, he did feel the need to keep away from him- more for the sake of a hassle than anything else. It was an easy thing to do really, especially on a planet as populated as Duerxa. All it took was a quick command to block the Gragrita's caller-code and the Autobot was set. Cycling his vents rather wearily the bot shifted his box up farther up his chest and continued to walk onto the dock that held his ship, passing through a police scan that read his ID as he went.

He was careful as he made his way towards his ship at the far end of the docks, making sure that he wasn't followed by any particular trouble makers. The bot reached his ship and placed a hand against her side, fondly saying; "there she is." It was a beautifully crafted, yet beaten and scratched yellow interplanetary speedster with high, energon powered boosters capable of enduring trying conditions almost twice as long as any other similar spaceships. The ship was fast, slender, and made for flexible environments- perfect for his profession. It was both tough and quick. Bumblebee had crossed galaxies and dipped down into foreign solar systems chorsan cycles away from what he knew with this beauty for so many vorns he couldn't process traveling any other way anymore. It had been given to him by a friend on Kianeth, who had helped him build it shortly after he'd begun work as a "bounty hunter." (The term is only tentatively added to Bumblebee's designation as, really, he does whatever job he wants and that doesn't always mean he's going out to capture the bad guys.) It was a tough one, for sure. As long as Bumblebee had traveled with it he could remember having to fix it at least once for every seven planetary rest stops. There have been times when he's even had to rebuild the thing practically from scratch.

Recently, his ship, _The Hornet_, had been damaged during a chase through an asteroid belt. Turns out, there are planets whose law enforcements aren't all that happy with him. If his ship's signal happens to cross their radar even for even a moment he'll end up with half the galaxy coming after him for one reason or another. Thankfully there are only two galaxies where such is subject to happen and both are pretty easy to avoid.

Anyway, the damage to her was minor enough to save him from worrying but also just enough to warrant repairs. He knew better then to leave his ship with any sort of mutilation for any extended period of time. Patting the ship's side he moved around to the outer barrier, facing the street, and turned to his box. Flipping it over he sent a signal to the small microchip set inside its central system, introducing a code that caused it to split down the middle. It separated from the middle about three inches, revealing a metal cylinder built in the space between. Pressing his fingers into the teeth on the sides and twisting the cap, he pulled off its cover. Setting the cap aside the mini-bot reached in and flipped a small trigger then grabbed the protruding lip of the cylinder when it popped out. Twisting it a few times he adjusted the power level until he was satisfied before pushing the protrusion back down and turning the box over. Without putting it down he let go of the box and, automatically, a blue light built up inside the cylinder, humming as the box hovered level with his chassis. He sent a second command code to the box, ordering it open and waited as it split into four parts. Now that the toolbox was set and ready, Bumblebee could grab the nearest magormatitator pin and cutting torch to begin pulling out parts of the side-paneling.

Several breems later and he was servo to flex-joint deep in wiring, covered in vermicious grease and pure golias oil. He was so centered around replacing a broken cam under the exocapritor funnels that he forgot to release the compressed oxygen from a connecting tube. Using a tension wrench he began to remove the tube's conic cap but before he could completely unscrew it the cap soared off the tube, forced off by the compressed oxygen within, and hit a Cybertronian passing by on the street behind him with and loud _clang_.

"Slag!" the tall bot cursed and covered his left optic with a servo.

"If'sht," Bumblebee grumbled, "Oyá, over here!" he called to the bot (1). Extracting his arms from the ship's interior Bumblebee waved to him and gestured for him to stay where he was. Quickly storing away the tool box and sliding the panels closed he jogged out of the docks and made his way towards the other bot, standing in an irritated fashion at the edge of the street.

"Hey, sorry about that!" Bumblebee apologized, gratefully taking the conic cap from the other, "I forgot to release the compressed oxygen there. Are you alright?"

"Just some minor damage to my optic," the Cybertronian was clearly older than him, perhaps being about 350 or so vorns old. His frame was lean, flexible, and thin, giving the impression of a technician or practitioner. It was too pristine to belong to a technician, though, as said by the grease covering Bumblebee's own armor, and the colors he wore gave off a more noble impression. He was mostly white and light blue, with silver cuffs sandwiched between copper rims around his servos and pedes. His elbows curved out and pointed somewhat at the ends of each arm- also outlined by a copper color. The Cybertronian's legs were long and adorned with special suspension Bumblebee had seen only in the toughest Space Bridge Technicians of Cybertron. On either side of his head, sharp sensors stuck out, similar in appearance to what Bumblebee remembered the Humans of planet Earth calling; "elf ears". The tips of which were dipped in silver and outlined thickly by blue. On the left sensor the Cybertronian word for "theory" was written in copper and on the right sensor, the Cybertronian word for "law" was written in a similar fashion.

When the bot removed his servo from his optic it revealed a large crack breaking across the dark blue orb, smaller fracture hairs forming a lattice-work of damage around it.

Bumblebee fought the urge to wince; optics weren't the most sensitive part of a Cybertronian's anatomy but that didn't mean nerve sensors weren't built around them. More than that, though, repairing them was a major pain. You had to find the right size, color, metal type, frame type, and system connectors. If the optic didn't fit in all the right categories it might not function like the other optic; couldn't zoom in, change to heat/rad sensors, turn fast enough, the list of problems was endless. They were difficult to construct too, so your best option of finding a proper optic would be to go all the way to Cybertron and unless you had a citizenship pass, served time as an autobot in the war, or got an invitation from a bot with high political power you could forget about even entering the first moon's orbit.

"Geeze, 'minor'?" he said, peering at the cracks, "mech, you're going to have to buy a new optic!"

The other bot shook his head, "I'm a medic, I can fix the damage myself. You might want to consider asking a professional to fix your ship, though." He cast a look over to _The Hornet_, the yellow interplanetary speedster patiently awaiting further treatment at the docks.

"And risk causing further damage to it? No way in the Pit! Besides, after refueling her I barely have enough credits left for a single cube of energon," Bumblebee rebuffed.

The practitioner raised an optic ridge, "are you a bounty hunter?"

Shrugging, the yellow bot replied, "you could say that, I guess. I do other jobs too, why?"

"I might have something for you; can you come to Yongun 223 when you're finished with your ship? It's Southeast of the _Gorgon Plum_," he told him, "we'll discuss the specifics of the job there."

"Why should I? I don't even know what the job is, and, sorry mech, but I'm not doing anything until I know your designation," Bumblebee refused, crossing his servos over his chassis and giving the taller bot a scowl.

He huffed, "my _name_ is Cogs and the details of this particular job shouldn't be discussed in public company." The blue-white mech's optic gave off a spark and he frowned, covering it, "I'll give you my com. frequency, when you're ready I'll return here and we can talk it over at a location of your choosing. Does that sound any better?"

Bumblebee thought over his options, from what he could see the mech didn't have any particularly dangerous weapons and he didn't seem like one of those crazies that took apart bots for their parts and sold them under the sythentic tap-board.

Why not take a chance?

"Fine," he submitted. Cogs nodded and soon Bumblebee's com-link system was alerting him to the message of a bot he did not recognize. After a moment of examining the frequency he withdrew the message into an un-labeled folder.

::I have it saved, I'll com you:: he sent.

::If I don't hear from you, I'll come back:: Cogs told him, almost warningly, then turned away with a nod and mixed back into the crowd.

The yellow bot watched him go before he returned to the docks and to repairing _The_ _Hornet_.

He hadn't taken a job from a med-bot before, especially not in such a suspicious manner. Even with the possibility of this meeting being a trap, Bumblebee couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement. Whatever was going to happen, he would be flying away from Duerxa with a little more than what he had flying in.

This should be good.

* * *

(1) Oyá: (Oh-yah) derives from the Spanish word "oyé", slang for "hey" or "hey you!"

**Terms/Pronunciation:**

Duerxa: (D-where-zuh) Market/sales planet in the galaxy of Xen (Zen).

Kianeth: (Kee-an-eth)

Lomma: (Lom-mah) Gragritan curse word

If'sht: (Eef-sh-T) alien curse word, meaning the same as "shit" or "fuck"

Sonic Apulsavator: ( Sonic A-pulse-a-vay-tor): These are hard to explain, they are sort of like elevators for Duerxa. They can take you from the skin to the core of the planet, but reform themselves to fit the characteristics of certain aliens. Each species is put into a data base and saved, when the species steps on/swipes a pass (or something) the system can recognize them and then reshape itself to fit the species. EX: super heavy, big, amphibian-like Gragritan steps on the sonic apulsavator and it expands, more extensive suspension activates to accommodate weight, temperature heats up, etc.

Magormatitator: (Mag-or-mat-i-tay-tor)

Vermicious: (Verm-i-sh-ious) no relation to "vermicious k'nids." Grease commonly used in spaceships to prevent rust, chipping, etc.

Golias: (GO-ly-as) cool alien oil, non-flammable

Exocapritor: (Ex-oh-cap-rih-tor)

Dacker: (Da-ck-er) curse word for "fucker"

Gragrita(n): (Grah-gry-tah) the plural form is the same but with an 'n' at the end. Large, dark and scaly, amphibian-like creatures (in that they need to live in hot places). Their head's share a resemblance with a Komodo Dragon's but have Dilophosaurus cartilage web-collars (riles?) around the neck. When they're mad they flip out and frame the face with an array of blues, reds, and sunny yellow tints that may sometimes glow in a show of nervousness. They walk on two legs and sharp, generally green, eyes. Someone draw me a reference pic, I wana know what else I should really explain about them! :D

**Note from the Author: **I'm gunna be super busy these next few days, maybe months, so I don't know when I'll get the next chappy up but I'll do my best to get it to you as soon as I can.

Thanks for reading! Reviews are great for feedback, though not necessary to keep me going. I also haven't completely cleaned it through for errors yet, I'll do that more tomorrow.


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